1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and method of controlling the same in which security is taken into consideration in the printing of information displayed by a web browser on a mobile information terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile information terminals typified by mobile telephones and PDAs now have multiple functions and many of them come equipped with a web browser. The web browser accesses a WWW server on a network, receives data and various content and displays these in the form of a web page. This has been accompanied by growing demand for the printing of the information displayed by the web browser on the portable information terminal.
Thought has been given to a method of transmitting information, which is being displayed by a mobile information terminal, to an image forming apparatus as is and having the apparatus print the information in a manner similar to that in which printing is performed using a personal computer. However, if there is a large quantity of information, as when the page being displayed contains a large number of images or moving pictures, the method described involves prolonged transmission time and higher communication cost. This is inconvenient as far as a mobile information terminal is concerned.
Accordingly, various techniques have been proposed for solving this problem. For example, the specification of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-348386 proposes transmitting information such as an URL, which is for accessing a WWW server, from a PDA or the like to an image forming apparatus, acquiring data by accessing the data on the WWW server based upon the information using the image forming apparatus, and printing the data at the image forming apparatus. Further, the specification of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-259098 proposes having a PDA or the like acquire advanced print data and simple print data from a WWW server, transmitting only the advanced print data to an image forming apparatus and printing the advanced print data using the image forming apparatus.
With these conventional methods, however, the specified WWW server is accessed unconditionally. This is extremely dangerous from the standpoint of security of the image forming apparatus. For example, there is the danger that the image forming apparatus will access a pay site or a malicious site. In particular, in the case of an image forming apparatus used by a number of unspecified users, it is preferred that the apparatus be adapted taking security into account so that other users will not be affected adversely.